


and i'll wait for you, as if i'm waiting for a storm to stop

by irisesandlilies



Series: stuck on the puzzle [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame Fix-It, Canon Compliant, Choking, Codependency, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, I write like a drunk poet sorry, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Bucky Barnes, just a little as a treat, vague allusions to the red string of fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27485782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisesandlilies/pseuds/irisesandlilies
Summary: “I’ll always come back for you.”He asserts it like a vow, another to add to the promises they’ll recite until death finds them still in love.***AKA all the times Steve came back for Bucky
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: stuck on the puzzle [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099985
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	and i'll wait for you, as if i'm waiting for a storm to stop

**Author's Note:**

> title from [glass in the park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jogmnbvy0U&ab_channel=AlexTurner-Topic) by alex turner 
> 
> unbeta’d

**_1._ **

It tastes like whiskey and desperation, a taste Bucky couldn’t quit. If he could he would be on the next plane back to Brooklyn. But the thing that had mattered most in Brooklyn had followed him here, and he was following him. A constant game of back and forth and they finally found themselves in a moment where one had caught the other. 

Steve is leading him towards his bed and towards the jaws of death. Bucky has never been more content. 

“I love you,” Steve remarks so softly, something adjacent to awe swallowing his words. 

Steve kisses him, presses his mouth warm and careful. Bucky chases it, in the same way he had upon returning from basic training. Like he’s trying to prove that they can bend him into their soldier, but he was Steve’s first and he hasn’t forgotten how to affirm it. 

Steve hums, a validation. 

Bucky shivers, trembles with the feeling he’d been lacking for so long now. Because carefully coded love letters weren’t enough. How could they be when he could have this?

Steve is pushing him onto the mattress, curling towards him, knees flush and mouths fixed. On their sides, he’s pressed close enough to draw Steve’s face from focus, a disjointed gleam of blue and a familiar breath against his lips. 

There’s a hitch, a swelling in Bucky’s chest and the sound of breathing tumbling into sobs. It takes Bucky a moment to stitch it together and realize it’s him. He surges towards Steve, sobs harder at the miraculous familiarity of Steve’s entire form folding around him. Lying on the ground pressed against canvas could never dare to mimic this. The way Bucky presses his cries into Steve’s chest, exchanges it for something sustaining instead. 

He was starved in every conceivable way behind enemy lines, bandages and booze could only restore so much. They had robbed the warmth right from his veins with IV’s and burns, now Steve cradles the back of his head and returns so much of what he had lost. 

Slowly, Steve pulls Bucky’s face towards him and traces his thumbs idly across his cheeks. Barely above a tearstained murmur, he asks, “are we gonna talk about it?”

“No.” 

_Don’t me make._

Steve splays his palm carefully across Bucky’s side like he can write over the bruises there with sheer will and affection. Steve’s expression reads resignation, but he prods gently, softens the touch at Bucky’s ribs but hardens his resolve, “Buck.”

He swallows a whine, “you wanna talk? Let’s talk about you, Steve.” There’s a hushed bitterness that sours his tongue, lingers like liquor on his breath, gives all his words a troubled hue. 

Steve flinches, a soft echo of a gesture but Bucky doesn’t miss it. Steve’s eyes betray him as they are apt to, a plea that takes root in something like fear. From the recoil, Steve’s body settles into a slump, folding his shoulders and ducking his head. 

“I’m still me.”

_I’m still me._

_Fuck._

Fuck Steve for ever thinking Bucky could doubt that. Bucky’s thoughts are a tapestry of frayed threads, flitting fears and tangled anger. But never had a whisper of doubt woven into the array to poison his trust.

There are few certainties left for Bucky to anchor himself to, the searing ache now ingrained in muscle and terrors embedded in his head, but Steve is a constant. Reality had bent while he lay on that table, but no force could ever pry the bit of Bucky grafted to Steve’s heart. There’s something that binds them, Steve had followed that line of fate to Austria. It would never matter how Steve’s soul took shape, he would follow Bucky anywhere. 

The shape would never matter really, Steve’s devotion to the soul at the other end of that thread would always swell well beyond the confines of Steve’s chest. It had pressed at his lungs, taken his breath. Now his body allowed just enough to room to prevent his affection for Bucky from suffocating him. 

Bucky feels every vowel of that sentiment, it sustained him and gave him purchase along the edge of sanity. 

“Of course you’re you,” Bucky murmurs the affirmation into the waiting warmth of Steve’s mouth, “you came looking for me.” 

It’s a delicate exhale, teetering on a whimper, that Steve gives in reply. Gives himself into another kiss and keeps his hands careful. 

“That was stupid, Steve. Really stupid.” 

The watery grin Bucky punctuates the statement with is a sharp contrast to the solemn sincerity etched into Steve’s expression. 

“I’ll always come back for you.”

He asserts it like a vow, another to add to the promises they’ll recite until death finds them still in love. 

“I love you too, you know.”

_God, I really hope you know that._

“I know, Buck.” 

**_2._ **

_You know me._

It’s flashes, flares of blond, skin and bone, whiskey and promises. He tries to chase it, but the tethers bound to any semblance of memory restrain him. Pull him back into the soldier, push those brilliant glimpses away and press his finger to the trigger, bring his fist forward. 

_Bucky, you've known me your whole life._

There’s a whisper, like a mantra. It feels like peeling away the scab of a festering wound and allowing it to bleed clean. 

The man is wearing his own blood with conviction, holding the soldier’s bullets inside him like they’re tokens of affection. The soldier watches him take staggering steps as he claws at the recesses of his mind, his fingers coming away bloody with desperation for any memory. A thread to grasp and pull. There’s nothing but sterile surfaces inside the soldier, nothing to give traction and pull back his fist as he attempts to massacre the slurred murmurs of an ancient promise. 

_Then finish it. ‘Cause I'm with you to the end of the line._

It’s blood and back alley dirt. It’s an offering of a key and a lifetime. It’s fire and a foreign body but a familiar face. It’s the luster of a kiss in the blackout streets. 

Of course he knew him. He had come for him. 

He could never return the favor, reciprocate the sentiment wholly, but he lunges towards the murky water below in an effort. He catches the man and brings him ashore, in the same way the man had just waded in towards the soldier and fought off the violent current to breathe liberation in his lungs. 

The soldier’s first act in his freedom is coming back for the man who _always_ came back for him. 

**_3._ **

Bucky arches into the soft refuge of Steve’s mouth, gasps delicately at the homecoming. Bucky can feel every inch of him, the seams where they meet are a place that he could return to again and again and it would never be enough. He would never have his fill. It’s the closest they get to reaching into their chests, tearing at sinew and bone to take their hearts in hand and exchange them. 

They straddle the line, meticulous reverence bleeding into desperation. Devout whispers of kisses waning into something sloppy and perfect. Steve’s hands cradle his face, not something liable to breaking, but something worth holding together. 

It’s precious, it’s better than anything Bucky’s ever felt in his miserable life. It’s Steve, his heart stepping through the gaps of his ribcage to fall into Bucky’s chest and settle there. The ache of his missing left limb is forgotten, whatever he lacks, Steve gives. He gives and gives and gives. Steve gives every part of himself to Bucky, pays it like debt, and it’s stupid. _So stupid._

Bucky still takes it. Drinks it in. The slow drag of a careful thrust and a ragged breath pressed to Bucky’s temple. He feels like he might burn up, the feeling of Steve inside him will devour him and leave him shuddering and desperate. 

When he closes his eyes and mouths at Steve’s shoulder he can taste memories he thought he’d lost. Sickly sweet and molten on his tongue and he savors it, cries out for feelings he thought had been taken. Steve is whispering his name like it’s the only word that will pass his lips, tumble from them and settle against the shell of Bucky’s ear. 

The way Steve touches him, wraps his fingers around him and sets a slick rhythm feels like a question. The same one he had asked when he’d come in search of him, glowing and tentative in the dim of the Bucharest apartment:

_Do you know me?_

Of course he knew him, he had come looking for him. 

He meets Steve’s thrust in answer, presses his mouth to Steve’s and places a resolute response at the seam of his lips. Steve moans, wavering somewhere between unfettered ecstasy and agony. Bucky swallows the sound, feels the warmth of it swell and seep into every crevice of his body. 

He skirts a hand along the planes of Steve’s chest, splays his palm across his heart. He moves up, his hand settling carefully beneath Steve’s jaw. He presses his finger to the valley of his throat, testing. 

Steve tips his head slightly, asks Bucky to trace the whisper of bruises he had branded just days ago. He curls his hand into a tentative fist, feels two heartbeats throb in his fingertips. At a gratified gasp, Bucky draws back to trace his fingers lightly, as though he’s trying to prove something to himself, something Steve already knew. 

He can feel Steve’s pleas, hear them between shallow pants and quiet sobs.

When Bucky comes, Steve’s repeated requests bleed into outright begging. He pushes in, deep, familiar, desperate. 

“Don’t do this. Don’t go.” 

_“Steve.”_

His name gasped and Bucky’s thumb delicately pressed at his carotid is all it takes, Steve blooms warm inside him, his cries caught between Bucky’s lips. 

Steve stays there and Bucky keeps him. 

A stretch of frayed breathing and hiccuping sobs follow. 

He’s afraid to ask, like he’s stealing light from the brightest thing in the universe and stowing it all inside himself. Like he’ll push too hard and their shared ties will tear. Like Steve will give up, like he should’ve decades before. 

“You’ll be there when I wake up?”

Steve kisses him, a carefully crafted juxtaposition of sure and gentle. Just as he had the first time, someplace far away and much softer. 

It’s staunch, like a prayer, like a promise, “Always.” 

**_4._ **

_That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight._

Holding a sliver of the shield and limping toward certain death is how Steve is reunited with Bucky. Sam’s voice and luminous rings signify that the fight hasn’t been in vain. 

Seeing Steve lurch towards hope like that brings forth equal parts fury and adoration. Reality regrows beneath Bucky’s feet, heaps of destruction punctuated by Steve’s reckless abandon to assure its authenticity. 

_I’m following him._

It’s the same game nearly a century later, following each other into death and back out. 

Steve’s name was the last taste to touch his tongue as he had splintered and hurdled towards the ground, towards nothing. 

It was a request, left in the margins and assured by history: _come back for me._

And Steve had, bleeding and bruised and on the cusp of surrender. Steve had reached a hand through the cracks in time and reality and pulled Bucky back through. 

**_+1_ **

There’s a shadow in Bucky’s apartment, in his bedroom. 

Every space he’s ever carved himself has been invaded, his very own thoughts infested. 

A shadow violates his home, rifles through notebooks, and pulls at his threadbare sheets. 

He never wanted to fight, hid until a conscription letter found him. Fight has followed him and taunted him, made him bleed for everything he has and doesn’t have. When his blood wasn’t enough, his heart withered and dry and useless in his chest, his sanity was taken too. 

For all the ways their souls had matched, their devotions overlapped, that was the distinction. That was where the threads had come undone, two halves of a whole drifting apart. Steve had volunteered to fight, submitted his body to the pursuit of battle. Where consent was given, consent could be revoked. And it had been revoked, whatever tatters of thread left from the joining of their souls wrapped around Bucky’s neck and a completely foreign person took Steve’s place beside the lake.

Bucky would never be awarded that luxury. 

He has no other recourse, he’s tried so fucking hard to build something for himself from the rubble left in the wake and he won’t let a shadowed fist of Hydra take it. 

There’s no preamble, launching himself across the room he had hoped would never see conflict outside the echoes of it in his uneasy sleep. It’s a series of easy blows, landing resolutely as he fights back against the violation, _against the years of violation._

And it’s wrong. Of the countless lives the soldier had taken, there had been a constant that pieced them all together: the remnants of self-preservation, a will to live that even the most destroyed beings were betrayed by when looking death in the face.

Bucky’s opponent lacks it entirely. 

It’s far from a fair fight, it’s not a fight at all. The shadow absorbing each jab Bucky aims, tips their head back and spreads their arms. It’s sacrament, like the shadow will collapse into a kneel and sigh reverently as metal knuckles leave imprints of plating on their face. 

The shadow staggers at arm’s length, waiting, _hoping._

The complacency supplies even more strength to the punch Bucky places in the center of the shadow’s chest, his right fist just straying from their heart. The shadows reels, a reprieve just enough that Bucky can catch their shoulder, spinning them away and anchoring them with his arm at their throat. There’s a hitch in their breath, their throat flexing, signified with a whirring of plates along his forearm. The street light threatening to permeate the window catches on the gold threads, adding some forsaken flash of divinity to the moment. 

He presses harder. 

“Do it, Buck.”

That voice is like a bruise on Bucky’s psyche, a dull ache that takes shape in soft edges and vibrant hues of purple and blue. There’s something visceral inside Bucky, something that’s been starving so long now it’s grown too weak to call out. That something screeches now, bleeds bright and beautifully into the night. 

His forearm falls away from the shadow’s throat, leaving an interlude of panting in the darkness. 

“Let me see you.” The shadow bleeds into words, his back heaving into Bucky’s chest. 

Bucky’s hand, the one that’s always belonged to him, _always belonged to Steve_ , reaches for the shadow’s upper arm. Bucky eases the figure into a delicate turn. Studies the architecture of his profile as he turns, his breath coming in punches to ghost across Bucky’s face. 

_Fuck._

_Oh God, oh._

It’s just the same as the moment Bucky first heard his own name again, saw it jump from Steve’s tongue and drift through the DC afternoon to reach him so close but so far. He breaks the surface and surges towards the hand that had pulled him in turn. For all the times Bucky has died, he’s born again and again, reaching for Steve.

Steve’s eyes are wide with terror and there’s a trickle of blood trailing from his crooked nose. 

Steve is delicate words, equally cautious hands. There’s a finger sweeping across Bucky’s cheekbone as the remains of his soul split and spill onto the floor in a feral mess. He watches Steve’s mouth move, notes the way his name curls his lips exactly so, but nothing registers. 

_“Buck, it’s me. It’s Steve. I’m so sorry. Come on, breathe.”_

He doesn’t remember how, waits for Steve to show him. Steve fights like hell to steady the stuttering in his own chest to inhale evenly and exhale in equal measure. Drags him flush with his heart so Bucky can feel his mustered sense of calm seep between his ribs and hum against his mouth. It feels like thawing, every fiber of his being resisting warmth, his nerves alight and screaming for the familiarity of cold, of his breath suspended, frozen in his lungs. If Bucky has ever known persistence to rival his own, it’s Steve, breathing heat against his lips and into his soul. 

It’s slow, it’s little steps he stumbles on but Steve wades through it, in the same way Bucky clutched at Steve’s corpse and brought him to life on the river bank. Steve persists in the same way he has endlessly chased Bucky through time and circumstances too dire to reasonably pursue. 

But that’s the thing, there’s no reason to this. It just exists, it lives and breathes with a life of its own, this thing between them. Their love had been a living, breathing thing and Bucky watched it die, drown in the lake beside the platform where this Steve never reappeared. It died screaming, buried in the earth. No grave marker, the grass had regrown and there was no indication that any love had ever lived, it was only a whisper of a life in their hearts.

_It’s gonna be okay, Buck._

A part of Bucky had never resurfaced that day either, something that had survived Hydra, impervious to the absolute chaos that tore apart every atom of Bucky, it took its deep and dying breath as Steve’s five seconds slipped away. 

Suddenly, Bucky finds himself victim to a similar violence that took Steve’s heart on that bridge in DC. To grieve a part of yourself so agonizingly, to plead and barter, and to finally have it back and pummeling you to death, kicking and stabbing to prove it had never died at all. 

_“It’s me, Bucky.”_

Bucky swallows a reply and nods instead, frantically trying to validate that promise, skirting his touch across Steve’s lips, back towards his vivid gaze. He drags his fingers across the finite curl of a smile framing Steve’s eyes, the contrast of his bottom lashes sweeping the swell of purple. He looks so exhausted and yet so bright. 

_So young._

_So real._

“How could you? How could you leave me?” 

“I didn’t, I didn’t.” 

Bucky crushes his mouth against Steve’s, and that’s the closest they get to fighting, a choreography. Steve responds, rejoins the fight, just as reverent but no complacency. Struggles against the movement of Bucky’s mouth, like he’s desperately trying to tell Bucky where he’s been, and that he’s never leaving again. 

“I’ll always come back for you.” 

And Bucky would always wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m fully convinced that old steve is an imposter and steve is trapped in the quantum realm trying to get home. 
> 
> I’ve been so busy with uni that I never thought I’d write something again lol. anyways, find me on [tumblr](https://godfreysroman.tumblr.com/), thank you so much for reading!!


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